This was perhaps the most tumultuous one-quarter since Facebook went public. Facebook faced intense criticism regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its data privacy practises, resulting a massive pull-back of developer abilities as Zuckerberg headed to testify before Congress. Last quarter insured Facebook’s first-ever decline in users in a market, with a 700,000 user drop in the U.S.& Canada market following changes to promote well-being that reduced the prevalence of viral videos.

Facebook was able to revive its U.S.& Canada user growth this one-quarter, perking back up to 185 million, from 184 million last quarter — though that’s just a return to where it was in Q3 2017. Monthly active user counting in the market went from 239 to 241 million. That shows that while people might disagree with Facebook’s approach to privacy, they aren’t about to give up their News Feeds.

Demonstrating Facebook’s declining web presence, mobile made up $10.7 billion, or 91 percent of all ad revenue, up from 89 percentage last one-quarter. Facebook reached $4.98 billion in gain, up from a weak $4.26 billion last one-quarter. Median Revenue Per User reached $5.53, up 30 percentage year-over-year thanks to strong gains this one-quarter in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Facebook’s headcount has swelled 48 percent year-over-year as it’s now half-way to its promise of doubling its security and content moderation staff from 10,000 to 20,000 in 2018.

The recent scandals have put a lot of downward pressure on its share price, but apparently the company thinks it’s a good buy. It’s increased the amount authorized under a share repurchase program by an additional$ 9 billion, on top of an original$ 6 billion scheme, of which it’s expended$ 4 billion. It’s partly to offset big stock distributions for employees, but CFO David Wehner also said it was ” opportunistic ,” aka related to Facebook perceiving its cost as too low. Wall street apparently liked the earnings report as shares are up over 4.38 percent to $166.68 in after-hours trading.

The question is whether the new ads transparency requirements, developer platform crackdown and Facebook’s quest to stimulate using it healthier will show up in next quarter’s earnings. These changes could deter advertisers, give users less functionality play games with and remove low-quality viral content that might make users feel bad but keeps them scrolling.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that,” Despite facing important challenges, our community and business are off to a strong start in 2018. We are taking a broader view of our responsibility and investing to make sure our services are used for good. But we also need to keep build new tools to help people connect, strengthen our communities, and bring the world closer together .” We’ll get to hear more from him at 2pm Pacific during the course of its earnings bellow, so stay tuned here.

Zuckerberg said 200 million people are now in” meaningful Groups ,” up from 100 million last year, though Facebook has a long way to its 1 billion objective.

WhatsApp Status has pulled away as the more popular of Facebook’s Snapchat Stories clones. It was at 300 million daily users, equivalent to that given to Instagram Stories, last period Facebook a stat.

Since users are moving from feed reading to Narrative watching, Facebook tells it needs to construct Stories ads as good as feed ads to protect its core revenue stream.

Zuckerberg says one of his biggest unhappiness is that Facebook didn’t get to shape the mobile ecosystem because the company was still small when iOS and Android launched. That’s why Zuckerberg is adamant about Facebook having a major role in the future of virtual reality and augmented reality, which he sees as calculating platforms of the future.